Where it all went

I wonder how many places have to reassure themselves that they are a good place to be. Does ontological insecurity strike in the heart of London, Blackpool (hah! some chance!), York, or even fairest of the fair Portnablagh?  So why this reassuring message on Pier Street? I ask merely to be informed ... Let us pass on to other matters touristy.

Every now and then in this virtual scrapbook I get to show how things turned out. In this case some five or more years ago the place below was just an empty building awaiting rescue with an enigmatic message on the door that I never saw open. Later that year the edifice was covered  in scaffolding and shrouded in green. Now it's become The Store on Pier Street (there is only one store in case you might be wondering, indeed, with a good wind behind you, you could spit from one end of Pier Street to the other) and part of that Old Town/Humber Street renovation scene of  arty eateries, arty galleries and plain silly shops designed to attract those who like arty eateries, arty galleries and silly shops.  I believe folk of that nature come under the generic term of tourist. Please don't get  me wrong, I have in my time been a tourist, I know that may be difficult to believe but I have traipsed footsore and gawped manically and wearily around the tourist traps in London, Dublin, Paris, York and so many other "places of interest" and yes, Blackpool (don't knock it 'til you've tried it) and come away poorer and none the wiser like so many before and since. Tourists to Hull are most welcome and they are more than welcome to Humber Street; in fact if they really like it they can take it away when they leave.

Whispering sweet nothings

I posted about this delightful surreal carving in Pearson Park before showing the thing being carved and to be honest I thought I'd posted about it again to show the completed work but you know what thought did ... so to put things right here's a few more images. While taking these pictures a man rode by on a bike and clearly he hadn't noticed this before and he nearly fell off craning his neck round  and gaping in disbelief ...

I recall the artist telling me that he was trying to make the figures a bit more child friendly and less scary towards the ground which appealed to Margot who took this picture.

The weekend in Black and White is here.

Dreggsgate

So tell me, for my ignorance is immense, how do civilised places deal with increasing anti-social behaviour? Do they not call in the police to deal with it? Employ some security staff to eject malfeasant scum? Maintain a presence of authority to let them know who's in charge? Or ... Do they lock the doors and hide in their office like timorous mice? Abjectly surrender to the guilty, criminal few at the expense of the innocent majority? 

I ask because never in my few years on this earth have I seen such pathetic cowardly actions as those carried out recently in Hull Paragon Station. The gates you see above will be closed to all and sundry between 9.30 and 16.30 to reduce crime .... It is so reassuring that criminal types keep such a workaday schedule, they probably sing that Dolly Parton earworm as they go about their nefarious dealings ... Station manager Dan Dreggs (I'm not making this up) has placed notices up explaining that it's really British Transport Police's plan ...but it's his name on the notices and he is responsible for this act of stupidity.

The whole thing would be laughable if it did not have repercussions on those who absolutely must use this gate, they are told they should book ahead to get admission. But many did not know and so could not, neither can a good few even read the sign because disability comes in many forms and the Dreggs of this world are just way out of their depths ... did I mention that taxis drop off their fares outside this gate? That the main car park for the station is outside this gate? So both fit and frail must both make their way right around the front of the station and enter via Ferensway just because a few miscreant nobodies have ruined the peace of Mr Dreggs and he simply cannot cope (between the hours of 9.30 and 16.30!)... oh yes, this was until a fortnight ago signed as a fire exit ...

A petition has been running since this idiocy began you can sign it here should you be outraged by this nonsense.

A great many are of the opinion that this action is contrary to disability discrimination legislation; I feel it may well be so.

So it's probably my fault that ...

If you have a super-duper memory you will recall seeing the self-same store way back in 2012. Back then the threat was of redevelopment, I cannot for the life of me recall what redevelopment was threatened other than that it had been put on hold ... permanently it now seems.

Now the name above the door says House of Fraser but to me this is Binns  as Binns it was when I first came to Hull. (I'm a Binns boy , there was a Binns in Hartlepool from whence cometh I and as a very, very bored child I was dragged round Binns so...bloody Binns it is, OK?) To real Hull folk this is, of course, Hammonds (v 2.0 the rather fine classical original was destroyed in the last European/Worldwide ding dong). Whatever you call it I  haven't bought anything here since they stopped selling the coffee I liked (back when I used to drink coffee) last century.

So it's probably my fault that ... this place is closing down soon which will add to the number of empty shops in the town centre. Or it would if the Council actually reported empty units properly instead of devising a cunning plan to mislead folk as to the true situation. I won't bore you with the details; it's the usual trick of counting what you want to count and then claiming things are just dandy. You know the drill by now.

Blue tent blues

What care I for a goose-feather bed? 

With the sheet turned down so bravely, O! 

For to-night I shall sleep in a cold open field. 

Along with the raggle taggle gypsies O!...

Not quite the cold open field but the tarmac under Myton Bridge can hardly be the most comfortable place in town either. You'll find homeless rough sleepers in many towns in the UK these days I guess. In Hull, at the last count (that I can find)  in autumn last year some 26 people were found to be sleeping out on the  streets, not all by any means in tents like these. Homelessness is a huge problem these days, mostly hidden it has to be said (sofa surfing, staying with parents and so on), rough sleepers being the most visible tip of this societal ice berg if I may use a much clichéd metaphor. This country is said to need three million new homes and it needed them, like, yesterday... At the present rate of building most of the homeless will be long dead and maybe... maybe that's the plan.

Other folk at City Daily Photo will hopefully have happier posts, at this month's Blue themed event. 

A road by any other name ...

You know how towns like to honour folk by naming streets after them: so this town has a Larkin Close; an appropriately dull cul-de-sac, Alfred Gelder Street, Jameson Street, and Ferensway , of course; that local turncoat John Hotham from the civil war times gets a road along with Sir Thomas, Lord Fairfax who gets an avenue; there must be dozens more: Raich Carter Way, Blundell's Corner spring to mind as I write... just outside Hull, across the road from me, there's a short avenue named after a guy who wanted to be Lord Glencoe but somehow the connotations of bloody massacre made him change to Lord Strathcona ... so, anyway,  the other year they decided to rename Garrison Road as Roger Millward Way. I'm not sure that this is any kind of honour since Garrison Road as was is really just an extension of the dreaded A63/Castle Street, the bane of motorists' lives and a right pain in the nethers to cross at times... and I wonder how many even know about this or whether the name will catch on ... when they finally get home, will the motorists of this fair town put their feet up, wrap their hands round a well deserved hot brew and say "oh that *beeeep* traffic on Roger Millward Way was such a *beeeep* disgrace" ... nah not going to happen, ever.
I won't pretend to know anything about who or what Roger Millward was, some sporty bloke, so I've heard,  rugby league, really, really not my scene ...

I mentioned today and several times before that this road is  a pain to cross and that young men have been seen to turn into grey beard loons waiting, funeral directors have been spotted lurking for falling stock ... well some concerned person has put up a plaque to let the world know that those who wait may be gone but are not forgotten, not lost just gone before ...

It's a kind of madness

I suppose my favourite view of Hull is one where I can't see it all, out across the Humber, where sky and Lincolnshire and water meet as some baldy bloke once wrote so many years ago. I was gazing across the wondrous brown ooze the other day when I spied out to the east something on the horizon that was new to me, so pushing the camera's zoomy potential to the limit I took a picture with no hope of it showing anything much. When I got home and looked at the hazy image above I thought what on earth is that ... turns out it's the biomass storage silos at Immingham docks some nine miles away as the seagull flies. It's all part of the current vogue for saving the world by  burning trees to make electricity. Instead of digging up coal from under the ground in Yorkshire (like they did for centuries) they now import wood (9 million tons per year) from across the world (America and China) in very large oil burning ships that dock at Immingham, discharge their biomass into these silos from whence it's taken by oil burning train to the Drax power station, in Yorkshire. I'm sure this salves the conscience of those who worry about the amount of atmospheric CO₂ produced by mankind (estimated at ~5%) compared to that produced by "nature" (~95%). I'm also sure they do not worry that burning wood makes more CO₂ per KW of electricity generated (50-85% more than coal and nearly 300% more than gas!) as wood burns less efficiently than coal (which is why our ancestors went to the trouble of digging out coal in the first place). Acres of forest are chopped down daily to turn on the lights in Yorkshire and hereabouts; it takes a mere fifty years for it to regrow. I've read that  4,600 square miles of forest are needed for this one power station alone, I find that an absolutely staggering figure if true. Chopping down young trees grown for this madness seemingly releases lots of  CO₂ from the forest which takes years to be reabsorbed by new growth, so harvesting biomass process actually increases atmospheric CO₂. 
This is , of course, not cheap, it is much more expensive to produce sparks this way than by traditional coal burning so we find biomass burning plants are closing all across the world, they simply can't compete. However Government policy (made law this week without any discussion or vote in Parliament but simply by ministerial decree, so much for democracy) is to increase the price of energy for everyone, sorry,  I should say to reduce emissions and make the UK Carbon neutral by 2050 (whatever that means) ...  It is obvious that burning biomass is far from being a sustainable, renewable, "carbon neutral" process . But there you go; the greeny squeaky wokey folk and HM Government will have it that there is a problem with our atmosphere and that this is a solution; they are, of course, all completely mad.